會做人 / 会做人
huì zuò rén
“know-how-to be person”
This means knowing how to be a member of the human society, behaving according to the standards set by that society. It covers being diplomatic, knowing how to say/do the right things, knowing how to behave / conduct oneself in the bigger, human community.
It can be in the positive (會做人), or in the negative (不會做人: offending people, treading on people’s toes, being tactless, not knowing how to butter up or please the right people).
There are lots of Chinese stories about intellectually challenged people. One of them features a man with one such wife who never got it right socially, so he said to her that she 不會做人 / 不会做人 / “not know-how-to be person”.
The verb 做 zuò can be “to do/be”, but can also be “to make”. The wife took it literally, so when the husband came home after telling her off for being tactless, she presented him with a batch of freshly made Chinese equivalent of gingerbread men, saying, “You say I don't know how to make people. Here, this proves that I do!”
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